HASBARA PUSHING FOR WAR WITH IRAN

Jeffrey Goldberg Pushes for War With Iraq–er, Make That Iran

by Alex Kane

Former Israeli soldier and current writer for the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg has a long cover story (9/10) on the “better than 50 percent chance” that Israel will launch air strikes against Iran by next July, with the aim of taking out the alleged nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic. Based on roughly 40 interviews with American, Arab and Israeli officials–some of them anonymously–Goldberg meanders from describing the worst-case scenario for what will happen after Israel attacks Iran to relaying dubious Israeli claims about how Iran is the new Nazi Germany to an analysis of Netanyahu’s relationship with his right-wing 100-year-old father. He does this while assuring readers that he is “not engaging in a thought exercise, or a one-man war game.”

Goldberg’s is just the latest in a line of recent stories from neo-conservatives and others on Israel or the U.S. bombing Iran (The Weekly Standard, 7/26/10; The Washington Post, 8/1/10).

Why anyone would listen to Goldberg or give him space in a magazine to hype up the threat from another Middle Eastern country is beyond comprehension, given Goldberg’s role in printing propaganda about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s ties to al-Qaeda (The New Yorker, 3/25/02; 2/10/03; Slate, 10/3/02). That turned out wonderfully, remember?

Ken Silverstein (Harper’s, 6/30/06) is certainly shaking his head–he chronicled Goldberg’s role in pushing for the Iraq War, writing that:

In urging war on Iraq, Goldberg took highly dubious assertions—for example, that Saddam was an irrational madman in control of vast quantities of WMDs and that Iraq and Al Qaeda were deeply in bed together—and essentially asserted them as fact…

Back in late 2003, at a panel discussion hosted by the New School for Social Research, the topic of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction came up. “Did the CIA simply mess up?” Goldberg asked Paul Wolfowitz. “Did I?” is the question he should have asked.

A lot has already been written about Goldberg’s latest, so here’s a selection of good analysis:

-Eli Clifton on how Goldberg’s article “is part of a campaign to push the Obama administration into authorizing a U.S. military strike rather than having any particularly believable scoops about an impending Israeli attack” (Lobelog, 8/10/10).

-Matt Duss on why an attack on Iran would have a “low likelihood of success” but a “high likelihood of disaster” (Wonk Room, 8/11/10).

-Paul Woodward on how the article is part of a campaign to put the Obama administration in a box to get the U.S. to bomb Iran (War in Context, 8/11/10).

-Tony Karon on Goldberg being willingly used by both U.S. and Israeli officials to “send messages” about both countries’ postures toward Iran (Rootless Cosmopolitan, 8/12/10).

Wars and rumours of wars are just another part of the game to keep us all in fear. I wrote about the threat of war against Iran at whatisknown.com showing the real reason for all of the recent wars.
I repeat here that if it were possible to walk into a store and buy a nuclear weapon, I believe that millions of people worldwide would be willing to take up a collection to buy some for Iran.
Israel has gone too far and people are catching on to the “chosen people” and “promised land” and “we are the victims” myths.

Proud Iranian said,

The fact is Iraq was a defunct country with no army, and a nation without any cause, Iran is a vibrant nation of revolutionaries, capable of retaliating to cut off the hands of any would be aggressors.

So far as the nuclear fire crackers go, those whom live in the forlorn hopes of using any such weapons, as force majeure, ought to understand that the very first step in such a direction, will signal to all the world the degree of madness on their part, and as we all know mad dogs only have one option; being put down!

Hence no dice. No amounts of chest thumping, and propaganda will coerce anyone, least of all Iranians, and in corroboration of this notion, the latest Lebanese border clashes define a new turn of events; no one is prepared to put p with bulling any more.

brian said,

michael mazur said,

In that (9/10) article Jeffrey Goldberg says that Israel has more than 100 nukes when he could have said that Israel has less than 500 for we read that John Pilger thinks they have more than 500.

Could be that by saying Israel has more than 100 it makes Israel appear more vulnerable and so has to act out of that vulnerability than if he said Israel has less than 500 which would give the reader a little more pause as the reader would more likely realise that Iran – or any country with or without wide eyed mad mullahs, would not risk complete obliteration by attacking with 1 or even 10 nukes.

Jeffrey Goldberg is a war monger who misuses his excellent prose to coldly help effect the incineration of perhaps 10,000,000 total innocents of Iran.

Being a very well read person he would know Jeff Prager clearly wrote in June that The Holocaust never happened in spite of the tattoed numbers on the arms of his then elderly relatives as he was growing up for he did the research, as would Jeffrey Goldberg have done, but doesn’t want to tell us that he came to the same conclusion.

Since Israel is based on the Holocaust being asserted as truth, what Jeffrey Goldberg should have been doing all along is arguing the case for its dissolution, as the only possible outcome beyond the incineration of Iran is global thermonuclear war between Russia and America with hundreds of millions dead.

I hope Jeffery Goldberg knows that he as much as the decision makers in Haifa/DC are eligible to be placed in the dock charged with war crimes having no parallel with any committed before by anyone or any nation state.

Geltmeister said,

There will be no attack on Iran. People who believe that are being suckered by Israeli propaganda. The reason for such sabre rattling is ground work for Israel’s upcoming attack on Lebanon. It’s a classic diversion tactic – everyone looks at Iran while Lebanon is being lined up for attack. Another angle is that when the attack against Lebanon comes the Israelis hope Iran will not help Hezbollah out of fear of the much publicised Israeli ‘attack’.

Lebanon, and it’s water, are the prize Israel wants. When people see Lebanon getting smashed by US bombs for the umpteenth time, they will sigh with relief that at least WW3 hasn’t started.

Also, the UN is about to announce Hezbollah are guilty of the assassination of Rafik Hirari, while every Lebanese believes it was Israel, even Hirari’s brother, the current PM of Lebanon has stated in public he believes it was Israel. So we will have the UN declaring Hezbollah guilty of some terrorist event, some more border provocations and then the onslaught of US aerial weapons on a largely undefended people.

Let us all hope that Hezbollah can repeat it’s 2000 and 2006 successes against the Apartheid, racist, war criminal army of that despotic little shit hole called Israel.